Joseph Michael Mercola (born 1954) is an alternative medicine proponent, osteopathic physician, and Web entrepreneur, who markets a variety of controversial dietary supplements and medical devices through his website, Mercola.com.[1] Until 2013,[2] Mercola operated the "Dr. Mercola Natural Health Center" (formerly the "Optimal Wellness Center") in Schaumburg, Illinois.[3] He wrote the books The No-Grain Diet[4] (with Alison Rose Levy) and The Great Bird Flu Hoax. Mercola criticizes many aspects of standard medical practice, such as vaccination and what he views as overuse of prescription drugs and surgery to treat diseases. On his website mercola.com, Mercola and colleagues advocate a number of unproven alternative health notions including homeopathy, and anti-vaccine positions. Mercola is a member of the political advocacy group Association of American Physicians and Surgeons as well as several alternative medicine organizations.[5]

Mercola has been criticized by business, regulatory, medical, and scientific communities. A 2006 BusinessWeek editorial stated his marketing practices relied on "slick promotion, clever use of information, and scare tactics."[3] In 2005, 2006, and 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Mercola and his company that they were making illegal claims of their products' ability to detect, prevent, and treat disease.[6] The medical watchdog site Quackwatch has criticized Mercola for making "unsubstantiated claims [that] clash with those of leading medical and public health organizations and many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements."[6]

Views and controversy

Mercola operates Mercola.com, which he has described as the most popular alternative-health website on the internet.[3] Aside from the main site, it also hosts various blog subsites, like Healthy Pets and Peak Fitness. Traffic counting from Quantcast shows the site receives about 1.9 million novel visitors per month, each returning almost ten times each month; the number of views are roughly equal to those received by the National Institutes of Health.[1] The site and his company, Mercola LLC, brought in roughly $7 million in 2010 through the sale of a variety of alternative medicine treatments and dietary supplements.[1] The site promotes a number of alternative health ideas, including the notion that homeopathy can treat autism, and that vaccinations have hidden detriments to human health.[1] An article in BusinessWeek criticized his website as using aggressive direct-marketing tactics, writing:[3]

Mercola gives the lie to the notion that holistic practitioners tend to be so absorbed in treating patients that they aren't effective businesspeople. While Mercola on his site seeks to identify with this image by distinguishing himself from "all the greed-motivated hype out there in health-care land", he is a master promoter, using every trick of traditional and Internet direct marketing to grow his business ... He is selling health-care products and services, and is calling upon an unfortunate tradition made famous by the old-time snake oil salesmen of the 1800s.

Vaccinations

Mercola has been highly critical of vaccines and vaccination policy, claiming that too many vaccines are given too soon during infancy. He hosts anti-vaccination activists on his website, advocates other measures rather than vaccination in many cases such as using vitamin D rather than a flu shot[14] despite the data not being conclusive[15] and strongly criticizes influenza vaccines. During 2011, he reportedly donated $1 million to organizations that oppose vaccination.[16]

Mercola has said that thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, is harmful due to its mercury content.[17]</ref> Thimerosal is no longer present in most vaccines given to young children in the U.S., though it is still present in some vaccines approved for adults.[18] Extensive evidence has accumulated since 1999 showing that this preservative is safe,[19] with the World Health Organization stating in 2006 that "there is no evidence of toxicity in infants, children or adults exposed to thiomersal in vaccines."[19][20]

Other views

Other controversial views Mercola supports include:

Dietary recommendations on food consumption that often put him at odds with mainstream dietary advice.[13]

Advocacy on the labeling and health of genetically modified food.[21] As well as for their elimination entirely from the market.[22]

Opposition to homogenization, claiming that homogenized milk has little nutritional value and contributes to a variety of negative health effects,[28][29] despite scientists considering that belief "tenuous and implausible",[30] stating "Experimental evidence has failed to substantiate, and in many cases has refuted, the xanthine oxidase/plasmalogen depletion hypothesis."[31]

Claims that many commercial brands of sunscreen increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood of contracting skin cancer with high UV exposure, and instead advocating the use of natural sunscreens, some of which he markets on his website.[39] This view is not held by mainstream medical science; in 2011, the National Toxicology Program stated that "Protection against photodamage by use of broad-spectrum sunscreens is well-documented as an effective means of reducing total lifetime UV dose and, thereby, preventing or ameliorating the effects of UV radiation on both the appearance and biomechanical properties of the skin."[40]

FDA warning letters

02/16/2005 - Living Fuel RX(TM) and Coconut Oil Products - For marketing products for a medical use which classifies those products as drugs in violation of 201(g)(1) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.[6][41]

09/21/2006 - Optimal Wellness Center - For both labeling and marketing health supplements for purposes that would render them to be classified as regulated drugs as well as failing to provide adequate directions for use on the label in the event that they were legally sold as drugs.[6][42]

03/11/2011 - Re: Meditherm Med2000 Infrared cameras - Mercola was accused of violating federal law by making claims about the efficacy of certain uses of a telethermographic camera exceeding those approved by the FDA concerning the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of the device (regulation of such claims being within the purview of the FDA).[43]

^Mercola, Joseph (2007). "Take Control of Your Health". Mercola.com. Retrieved 16 October 2018. Joseph Mercola was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 8, 1954. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine - Midwestern University.

^"Denying science". Nat. Med. 12 (4): 369. 2006. doi:10.1038/nm0406-369. PMID16598265. To support their ideas, some AIDS denialists have also misappropriated a scientific review in Nature Medicine which opens with this reasonable statement: "Despite considerable advances in HIV science in the past 20 years, the reason why HIV-1 infection is pathogenic is still debated."